Yet while Brits did vote by a majority of 1.3 million to leave the EU, what isn’t clear is whether they really wanted to be less European.
“There are essentially two dimensions to British politics: The left-right divide on economics and [the] liberal-conservative divide on social issues,” says Chris Curtis, a pollster at Opinium Research. He explains that among the political classes, these tend to correlate as social conservatives supporting right-wing economics.
It’s much less clear among the general public though.
“Lots of people voted ‘Leave’ because they wanted the UK to have more control and they opposed immigration, but they do not support the idea of shrinking the state, deregulating, and lowering standards,” Curtis adds. “Many of the leaders of the Brexit movement saw the future of the country differently.”
Britain as a European nation has always been a bit of a paradox.
On one hand, the public doesn’t think of itself as particularly European. On the other, it supports…